Pay TV: Tuesday, December 4

Brad Newsome

PADDY Doherty and Sally Bercow make an odd but endearing pair. He's an Irish Traveller and former bare-knuckle fighter who came to prominence on My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. She's the controversy-prone wife of the Tory speaker of the British parliament and an aspiring Labour politician. They became friends while filming Celebrity Big Brother last year and this two-part series has Bercow going to live with Doherty on a Traveller camp site for a fortnight. For the first week Bercow will have to clean Doherty's gleaming portable house every day -- regardless of how spotless it already is -- and will have to have food ready for him at all times. In week two it will be her turn to rule the roost. Doherty looks as tough and satisfied a man as you're likely to see but he talks frankly about his regrets and the tragedies he has endured. When he began school at the age of 11 he was bullied for being unable to read and write, and he remains illiterate. He and his wife, Roseanne, have lost several children, one as a teenager and the others shortly after birth. Unexpectedly moving.

Banged Up Abroad, Nat Geo Adventure, 8.30pm

A TYPICALLY impressive instalment in which Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan tells the harrowing story of the 15 months that he and Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout spent being held hostage by Islamist gunmen in Somalia in 2008.

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Secret Meat Business, LifeStyle Food, 8.30pm

Adrian Richardson makes a Thai-inspired marinated steak and shows how to de-bone and stuff a chicken.